Category Archives: Alerts

Aside

Please join the Georgia Legal Services Program (GLSP) in honoring its 2012-13 Champions of Justice at a reception on March 14, 2013 at the State Bar of Georgia Conference Center.

A Champion of Justice acts as an ambassador for GLSP with the Bar and/or state and federal policymakers and/or the public at large and is recognized for achievements, contributions, or other services to GLSP and continuing service to the legal profession and the cause of justice.Purchase your tickets now!

The relentless push to bleed Legal Services dry

June 6, 2012 — Ask people about the things that make America a “country of laws,” and one answer you will likely get is that everyone is entitled to be represented by a lawyer of his or her choice. But that promise has little meaning to more and more families at or near the poverty level. They’re among the millions of Americans for whom having a lawyer is a luxury beyond reach. Such families cannot afford a lawyer to defend them in an eviction proceeding, to fight a wrongful denial of veteran’s benefits, or to help get a restraining order to protect against an abusive spouse. Read more…

The phone call came during a board meeting. The president of the Legal Services Corp. urged that I leave the meeting and call back. “It’s important. We want you to come to the White House and talk about what you do,” he said.

Really?

Six of us were chosen from around the country, directors of legal aid and legal services organizations accustomed to toiling quietly in the hinterlands. We work on behalf of low-income folks with the kind of life-and-death legal problems that the poor face: the plague of domestic violence, the near impossibility of maintaining a family structure in the face of grinding poverty, the gut-wrenching choices that have to be made between paying medical bills or buying groceries.